The AI-driven memory shortage has found its way into the living room. Roku, the most popular streaming platform in the United States with more than 100 million streaming households, is raising prices across its hardware lineup by up to 60 percent.
The Roku Streaming Stick 4K jumped from $50 to $80 – the steepest percentage increase. The Roku Ultra and Streambar SE both rose $50, from $100 to $150. Even the entry-level Roku Streaming Stick went from $30 to $40. Roku has listed the previous prices on its website as “limited time,” though it has not specified when the new pricing takes full effect.
The company joins a growing list of hardware makers adjusting prices in response to what the industry has dubbed “RAMageddon” – the global memory-chip supply crunch driven by insatiable AI demand. Apple raised Mac and iPad prices by up to $300 in late June, Xbox followed with increases of up to $151, and Framework nearly doubled memory pricing for its Laptop 13 Pro earlier this week. The common thread is DRAM and NAND flash: AI training and inference consume vast quantities of high-bandwidth memory, squeezing supply for consumer devices that use the same underlying chips.
The Roku calculus
Roku’s position as the dominant streaming platform in North America makes its price hikes a bellwether. At $100, the Roku Ultra had been an easy recommendation for cord-cutters – CNET called it “undoubtedly the best Roku yet” at that price. At $150, the calculation changes. The Google TV Streamer, identically priced at its old $100, now becomes the more attractive sub-$100 option, at least until its own memory costs force a revision.
The increases also arrive just weeks after Fox completed its $22 billion acquisition of Roku, adding a corporate restructuring dimension to the pricing pressure. Roku did not respond to requests for comment.
For consumers, the message from the industry is consistent: if you see current pricing on any device that relies on memory chips, there is no guarantee it will last. Apple TV 4K has already climbed from $129 to $199, with the 128-gigabyte version reaching $249. The streaming hardware market, once a race to the bottom on price, is discovering that the floor has moved.
Sources: “Roku Hikes Hardware Prices by Up to 60%” (CNET, Jul 24, 2026, by Ty Pendlebury); “Apple raises Mac/iPad prices up to $300 as AI-driven memory shortage bites” (Bloomberg/The Verge, Jun 26, 2026)